


Ain't That A Kick In The Head

by antikytheranComplicator



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Humanstuck, dean martin - Freeform, shitty 50s music, this is my first finished fic so all constructed criticism is welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 12:52:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4829786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antikytheranComplicator/pseuds/antikytheranComplicator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jade discovers Dave's secret passion... for pop music from the 1940s and 50s.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ain't That A Kick In The Head

**Author's Note:**

> i listened to fucking dean martin for you alex holy shit make it stop
> 
> happy birthday! 

Everyone, without exception, has their guilty pleasures. Not a single person on this planet is without a hobby or an interest that makes them feel at least a little embarrassed. The only thing varies from person to person is the lengths one will go to in order to hide their guilty pleasures.

And if you’re a Strider, you’ll stop at nothing to hide them. After all, you’ve got an image to uphold. An image which would have to be somehow permanently scoured from the Internet forever if anyone found out that most of Dave Strider’s favorite music was from the 1950s.

It all started when he was ten. An  old man, who was carrying an even older record player, came across him on a burning Houston street, while the boy was standing in the street corner. He was badly bruised,with a broken leg and a stoic non-look on his face after a particularly brutal strife practice. The mysterious stranger didn’t have any pertinent medical knowledge, (regardless, he could tell that Dave got hurt like that a lot, the poor kid) but he tried his best to cheer the boy up. Dave silently watched as the man lit a cigarette and started the record player right in front of him, and music which sounded completely alien compared to his Bro’s hip hop played in front of him. He just stared at the dark swirling records and listened to the strange, wonderful sounds that emanated from the speaker for hours on end, until it got dark, and the old man walked off alone. He’d decided that his prized possession would be better off with the boy.

The record player itself lasted three days in the Strider household - it got one too many Doritos stuffed in it- but the genre had already made an impression on Dave, to the point where he would still be listening to it rather loudly when he was alone six years later (or so he thought), on one very particular day when Jade Harley barged into his room.

Dave immediately swung around in his swivel chair and the two just stared at each other for a few seconds as Dean Martin played on in the background. It took a little bit of her emerald green eyes blinking and a red dusting of-- was it a blush?-- on her face for anything to come out of her mouth.

“Hey,” she began to stammer. To make a long story short, your brother messaged me a while ago, and said I should come over here as soon as possible! I know it sounds kinda weird - especially knowing how he is - but here I am!”

Words spilled out of her mouth the way the water did out of the of temple on her island, which she had been moved out of a few years back. Each cluster of them was followed by her trademark shy laughter, the kind that drove men like Dave (read: only Dave) to madness, though Dave was too distacted to notice this time.

“It’s cool, Jade.” He said. “I don’t really know what drove Bro’s puppet-twisted mind to drag you here this time but if you wanna hang out around here we can chill, so go ahead and enjoy it. Bro doesn’t like visitors much. Just watch out for those puppets, and needless to say, the stairs.” This was all Dave was able to say before uncontrollably flushing red and immediately flipping himself turn-ways to turn off Dean Martin’s antiquated classics. Jade grinned, knowing she had caught the usually stoic coolkid off guard.

“Aww, Dave, I kind of liked that stuff you were just playing! I always knew you had a soft spot for really corny stuff like that. There had to be something for you to hide all these years!”Jade said, dashing all of Dave’s hopes that she had ignored the loudly blaring lovestruck ramblings of what qualified for a pop singer sixty years ago.

Before Dave could even open his mouth to defend himself, she continued. “And don’t you dare say you’re listening to all this for the irony! You’ve never bragged about this to me or our friends, and you’re listening to it all alone!”

If Jade could see behind the wall of darkness that was Dave’s aviators, she might have smirked at the nervousness that appeared for a split second. But otherwise unflinchingly he said, “Jade, I assure you that there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything you’re seeing here. It’s gonna be so fucking reasonable that you’re gonna think that this is some kind of Victorian etiquette tea party where we’re both wearing frilly dresses and holding teacups with our pinkies up and asking Jeeves to bring us some more humbley-dinks while we--”

“Dave!” Jade shouted. “Can you please just can all this… this bullshit, just once?!” Her voice was uncharacteristically angry.. “I know I’ve stumbled into your secret and all, and I’m super sorry for that, but why do you always have be so stubborn? It’s to the point that you always deny everything that goes against this image you want to project, even when it’s blatantly obvious to everyone around you that you are!”

Dave thought for a moment in an uncharacteristic period of silence, in which for a horrifying split second he wished Dean Martin was back on, because even listening to some dead guy rambling about making out with his girlfriend would somehow be less awkward than Jade trying to carry on a serious conversation with him about his personality.

“Whoa there Jade, why the fuck are you this angry all of a sudden, you’ve been putting up with my bullshit ever since we met each other. The obvious thing here is that you’ve been spending too much time with a certain shouty asshole we all know and love so much.”

Jade’s face was turning redder by the second. “It’s not that, okay! Look, your Bro made it sound like this was urgent and important, and the whole tone of it made me really worried about you, okay?” She paused for a few seconds, before rushing on.

“Oh my god, you’re perfectly fine, aren’t you? He was just fucking with us the whole time,and I’m a complete idiot for trusting him, but I…I really care about you, you know!”

Dave could say that he had never really thought about exactly how Jade felt about him, but then he would be lying. Jade’s little speech had affected him far more profoundly than either of them would have thought - he was always never really sure that what he thought of as a close friendship with Jade was anything more than a brief intermission between their usual bouts of lighthearted verbal sparring, and though to any outside observer, it was obvious that Dave was glad to find out that Jade cared so much about him she would burst into his room while he was blasting 50s music.

He trembled a little, only barely noticeable, but enough to activate the space bar on his computer, turning Dean Martin’s speech about leaky boats back on.

 

_Like the fella once said, ain’t that a kick in the head?_

 

Jade started blushing a little once she realized exactly what the music was talking about.

“Yeah Harley, it takes only the indomitable charm of a Strider to--”

Jade shot him a glare..

Dave threw his hands in the air. “..Fuck it. Thank you, Jade Harley, for actually giving enough of a shit about me to do something like that for me even if in hindsight it seems stupid as all fuck. Are you happy now?”

Finally it was Dave’s turn to start blushing. Jade took note, though the pink-faced coolkid was silently praying to GameBro Magazine and everything else that is holy in the universe that she wouldn’t.

He started speaking again. “If we’re having a cliche feels-fest that we might as well have dragged out of the collective assholes of all of Karkat’s worst movies, I might as well say some ridiculous crap about things like how I think you’re slightly cooler than most of the people I know and that maybe we could… I don’t know, talk about stuff like.. you know…”

“Oh, shut up for once, Dave! I know what you mean, you dork!” Jaid exclaimed, and before either of them could think about what the were doing Jade wrapped his arms around Dave and rammed her lips into his.

And after a couple minutes that felt like the greatest hours Dave had ever spent in his life, he had to agree with Dean Martin on one thing: it really felt like his head was being kicked to a pulp.

And he wouldn’t fix this particular hole in his boat anytime soon.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! This is my first (finished) fic, so all constructive criticism is welcome.
> 
> The song in question is "Ain't That A Kick In The Head" by Dean Martin.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCYzk67y_wc


End file.
